In recent years, there are many electric apparatuses that generate one or both of positive ions and negative ions to obtain effects of germ eradication, deodorization, refreshing and the like. An air conditioner, an air cleaner, a dehumidifier and the like are typical electric apparatuses with which an ion generation apparatus is combined. Some are put in the market as stand-alone ion generation apparatuses.
A traditional method to generate ions is corona discharge. In this method, a high voltage is applied to a discharge body in the atmosphere to produce corona discharge, thereby generating ions electrically. Patent document 1 discloses an example of an ion generation apparatus that uses the corona discharge.
The ion generation apparatus disclosed in the patent document 1 steps up an input voltage from a commercial power supply by means of a voltage step-up apparatus, further transforms it into a drive voltage that has a predetermined drive waveform, then applies it to the ion generation device to generate positive ions and negative ions.